Cursed Be the Child

by Mort Castle

  Carol Grace set the grocery bags in the trunk of the Lincoln and closed the lid.

  Emerald came up on the right. “Mrs. Dean,” Emerald said quietly.

  “You startled me,” Carol Grace Dean said, turning to Emerald. Carol Grace’s expression was puzzled. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember… Do I know you?”

  For an instant, Emerald wanted to say, “No, sorry to bother you,” and for a simultaneous instant, she wanted to scream every filthy word she knew in the preacher’s wife’s face. Instead, she did what she had countless times watched herself do on her mind’s eye. She moved in closer. A number of individual motions blended into one split-second’s movement. She swung the left side of her trench coat out far enough to shield the sight of what she was doing from any casual observer. She pulled the pistol from the right hand pocket and pressed it to Carol Grace Dean’s belly.

  She said. “Unless you do exactly what I say, I’ll kill you.”

  Like a stubby divining rod, the barrel of the gun quivered. It was the retreat of Carol Grace Dean’s flesh from the threat of death. The preacher’s wife’s mouth was open in her pallid face.

  “No,” Emerald said, “don’t scream.” Her voice was a hypnotic monotone. “Don’t scream, don’t faint, don’t do a damned thing except what I say.”

  Carol Grace Dean closed her mouth.

  “Mrs. Dean,” Emerald said, “look at me.” The look they exchanged and shared seemed to stretch infinitely. You’re looking into the eyes of a dead woman, Emerald thought. This is Death, Mrs. Carol Grace Dean. See it and understand it. You must!

  Emerald said, “I’ll kill you if you don’t do just what I tell you. You believe me, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Carol Grace Dean said. She nodded slightly. “I believe you.”

  — | — | —

  Eighteen

  She braked at the stop sign, too cautiously checking left, then right, then left before turning east on the two-lane blacktop. “Are you kidnapping me?”

  “No questions. No answers. Do what you’re told.” Emerald Farmer sat with the passenger door’s armrest uncomfortably punching into the small of her back. From time to time, she touched Carol Grace just above the hip with the end of the pistol barrel, a reminder of what was what and who was in charge.

  “I…I’m sorry,” Carol Grace said. “It’s that I’m frightened, you see, so I guess I talk. Oh, I am scared.”

  Emerald Farmer could smell the woman’s fear, almost as strong as her own sick odor of perspiration that clung to her like a sticky film. She couldn’t open the windows. That might make Mrs. Dean do something stupid, like try to yell to a passing motorist for help. She didn’t want the air-conditioning on; its whooshing roar might muffle her own voice and make Dean’s wife mess up.

  She wished this were over and done. “It’s okay. Talk if you want,” Emerald said. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

  “No, I won’t,” Carol Grace said, then improbably added, “Thank you.”

  “It’s funny,” Carol Grace said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Evan was advised he ought to…to take security precautions. He always refused.”

  “I’m sure he figured God would protect him,” Emerald Farmer said. She knew the preacher had no security guards at his home, although the Mt. Franklin police cruised by several times a day. She had thoroughly observed the house, and she had decided the simplest way to get to Evan Kyle Dean was his wife. She learned that Mrs. Dean always did the weekly shopping at the Cor-Mar store on Monday morning, and then…

  “Not that,” Carol Grace was saying. “Evan thought if someone truly wanted to harm us, then they’d try no matter what we did. But there could be people hurt, or even killed, who’d never have been part of it if we hadn’t brought them into it.”

  “What about his own safety?” Emerald asked. “What about yours? Wasn’t that a concern of your ever so thoughtful husband?”

  Although her grip on the steering wheel was white-knuckled, Carol Grace shrugged almost casually, as though her husband’s and her own well-being were a matter of small account.

  “The Lord’s will,” she said. “What happens to Evan or me is what God wants.”

  “The Lord’s will.” Emerald sneered. “That covers all bases, doesn’t it? One guy gets saved from a sinking ship. Praise God for the miracle. Two thousand people drown. The Lord works in mysterious ways, and let’s hear it for God!”

  “I wish I could explain it to you.”

  “You can’t,” Emerald said, “so don’t even try.” Damn, she was sweating like the interior of the Lincoln was a sauna. Her stomach cramped painfully; she kept swallowing, forcing down foul, explosive belches. She wanted to take off the trench coat, maybe even pull over to the side, get out and vomit.

  No, Emerald said to herself. Nothing can stop me. Nothing will stop me. I can do what I must do.

  She said it aloud, explaining it to herself “I am dead.”

  “Please…” Carol Grace said.

  “Shut up now. No more talking. Just drive. Take us home, Mrs. Dean.”

  When they got there, Evan came out to the car. He’d showered and shaved and put on a knit shirt and blue cotton trousers. He was smiling. He wanted to help with the grocery bags.

  It was so crazy. Here was a high-ceilinged living room, delicate French provincial furniture, and Monet, Pizzaro, and Renoir prints on the walls. What had she expected? A Scotch Guard plaid love seat with a clear plastic cover and a life-sized picture of Jesus or Elvis painted on black velvet? She was sitting on a chair that would have looked lovely in her own apartment, still sweltering in the damned trench coat, holding the gun, and, ten feet away on the sofa, there sat Evan Kyle Dean. On his lap, arm around his shoulder, was his wife.

  They looked, Emerald thought, as though they were posing for a photo for Us magazine. Christ, maybe she should have put them both in the bathtub in bubbles up to their necks; that was the standard celebrity pose.

  Damn it, she’d thought she had it planned so well, but she hadn’t considered anything with which to tie them up. She had to have them together to keep them covered and maintain control of the situation. All right, there was no way would Dean try anything with wifey on his lap.

  “I don’t know what this is all about,” Evan Kyle Dean was saying, “but you seem to be troubled.”

  “No,” she said. She was dead, and the dead had no troubles. There was something she needed to say to him, had yearned to say to him, and now seemed the time to say it. She smiled. “Fuck you, you lying bastard. Just fuck you.”

  Quietly, Carol Grace said, “My husband is not…”

  “Hush, Carol Grace,” Evan said. “Let her talk.”

  Not just “her.” She was a person, and she wanted Evan Kyle Dean to know just who she was. It was all that mattered. He had to know who was going to kill him—and why. Otherwise, there would be no justice in what she was doing.

  “My name is Emerald Farmer,” she said. “There’s somebody else here with me. You can’t see him. He’s dead, but he’s here.” She laughed softly. “His name is Randy.”

  Just as though she were making perfect sense, Evan Kyle Dean nodded.

  Damn him! She felt as though she were back in high school, trying to talk to a guidance counselor who’d been programmed for receptivity but couldn’t conceal that he’d heard it all before. To add to the impression, the minister said, “Do you want to tell me about Randy?”

  “I loved him,” she said. “He died.”

  Randy’s death, the reality of it, gripped her as if for the first time. Her eyes burned, and her strength ebbed. The pistol was so heavy.

  Through a thickening film of tears, she forced herself to focus on Dean’s face. If he said one word, she would kill him right now.

  “Randy was a dancer,” she said, forcing the words out as quickly as possible. “I’m an actress. I was. We both had show business dreams. Randy…he was beautiful. He was so beautiful.” The vision of him, le
an and strong and smiling and graceful, filled her mind.

  “But he was one of those horrible people. That’s what you Bible weirdos would say. He was bisexual. You know what that means? He loved women and he loved men.”

  And he loved me, she thought.

  She snickered. “Abomination unto the Lord, right, preacher? Isn’t that what you’d say?”

  “It is not my place to judge,” Evan Kyle Dean replied.

  “Oh, right, right,” Emerald said. “You’re not like the rest of them. Not you. You’re liberal. The golden rule applies to everyone, even queers. Love your neighbor. That was your line, and that’s a beautiful line. You suckered Randy with it. For a while there, you nearly suckered me.”

  It was all falling into place for her now. There was no longer anything unreal about this moment. It was intensely real.

  Keeping her voice flat, she said, “What happened was Randy got it. The scourge. The plague. AIDS. God’s punishment for gays. AIDS, that’s a death sentence.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Shut up, Dean. I’m talking.”

  Emerald went on. “Randy was scared. He didn’t want to die, couldn’t accept he would die because he was what he was. I think it was that it was just so damned…unfair. Sentenced to death because he made love! And you know what else scared him? He worried he might have given it to me.” She laughed. “Well, guess what? He did. Of course, he didn’t live long enough to find that out.”

  I have AIDS. I am dead. I am already dead.

  Evan Kyle Dean nodded, and in that instant, she hated him more than ever.

  “Randy was desperate. When he realized there wasn’t a thing the doctors could do, that’s when he turned to you, Preacher Dean. He honest to God believed you were the real thing. So sincere with your ‘God is love’ spiel, all forgiveness and compassion and folksy bullshit.

  “I don’t suppose you remember Randy. He was at your healing service in Buffalo, New York. That was just about three years ago. You put your hands on his shoulders. You told him God loved him. You told him God wanted him to be well. You told him God had cured him.

  “And what makes it all the worse, you lying bastard, is that Randy believed you. He honestly thought he was cured. He could feel it. That’s what he thought.

  “Then about two months later, Randy got a paper cut, one of those little nicks that hurts like hell and heals in about two days. But Randy’s didn’t heal. It got infected. His whole finger turned black, and blood poisoning shot up his arm, and his fever ran up to a hundred and four. They amputated his finger.”

  That was it, she remembered, the start of Randy’s dying. What came after that was horror—the weight loss, the flesh melting off him, the pneumonia that made his every breath a phlegm-crackling battle for air, and the purple-red lesions running with pus and plasma. Then his kidneys failed.

  She could not doubt that something similar or perhaps even more agonizing awaited her, but she was not afraid. The dead do not fear.

  “You’re not a minister, Evan Kyle Dean,” she said. “You’re a monster. You gave hope to the hopeless. You lied.”

  It was then the minister said what she never expected to hear. “Yes, I did.”

  It rocked her like a kick to the solar plexus, but it set everything perfectly right.

  She stood up and took a step. “Mrs. Dean,” she said, “get up. Put your hands behind your head. Then sit down at the end of the couch.”

  “No! I won’t!”

  “Do what she says, Carol Grace,” Evan Kyle Dean said, as though urging a reluctant child to listen to the babysitter.

  “Now you, Dean. Get up. I’m going to kill you.”

  He stood with his arms at his sides. She’d expected him, wanted him to look terrified, but instead he seemed only terribly thoughtful.

  Kill him now! She heard the command within her mind. Let his wife watch him die the way you watched Randy die.

  “Do you want to pray?”

  “I’ve been praying,” Evan Kyle Dean said, “but I want to tell you something.”

  “Say it.”

  “I’m sorry, Emerald Farmer.”

  She thumbed back the hammer of the Colt. It clicked.

  “No!” Carol Grace screamed.

  Emerald pulled the trigger.

  — | — | —

  Nineteen

  He gradually drifted up from one level of sleep to the next, until his eyes opened and he was awake and surprised. He had expected the iron claws of a horrible hangover to be digging into his brain, but there was no headache, no cotton mouth, no nausea, no shakes.

  He felt good, damned good, better rested than in quite some time.

  He raised his arm and glanced at his wristwatch. 9:50. He’d be late for his class. No, he wouldn’t. The hell with his class, the hell with teaching today.

  Slowly, he sat up on the rec room sofa, still marveling at the way he felt.

  No hangover, but damn it to hell, no blackout either. Last night replayed itself clearly—the fight with Vicki, then dragging his ultra-intoxicated ass down here and zonking out.

  That was all of it, he was sure, but he double-checked, searching through his memory. Nothing else, he was certain, but what was there was pretty bad.

  The fight had been a gem. He remembered every rotten, slashing word of it. Last night a long time festering boil went “pop,” spewing its poison all over his wife and his marriage.

  He had to set things right, and he would.

  Not only last night, but everything that was wrong, everything that had ever been wrong between Vicki and himself could be straightened out. He was confident of that. They had to…he had to make it work for Missy’s sake.

  She needed him.

  When he stood up, he felt something unusual—not unusual, but strange. He had the fleeting impression he was no longer himself.

  He was…different. It was a subtle change, but somehow there’d been a delicate alteration in his perspective, in the way he viewed the world. There was a similar change, too, in the way he looked at himself.

  Warren Barringer was neither pessimistic nor optimistic. He had a vague feeling of acceptance, as though from this point on, things would take care of themselves.

  He scratched his head. Something had happened to him. A thought that seemed completely irrational flashed in his mind: Something was taken from me, something was cut out of me.

  The idea disappeared like a bug snatched off a pond’s surface by a hungry fish.

  Warren went to the bar and picked up the bottle of Johnny Walker Scotch. He unscrewed the top. “Johnny, we’ve had some good times together and some bad times, but I don’t need you. Not anymore. So long, pal.” He tipped the bottle, and a brown stream gurgled into the stainless steel sink to swirl down the drain. He ceremoniously emptied each bottle, bidding farewell to Smirnoff, to Seagram’s, to Gilby’s.

  He went upstairs. In the kitchen, he opened the telephone directory and jotted down a number on the top sheet of a pad. Then he called North Central University. He wouldn’t be in today. No, he wasn’t sick. It was personal. He had things to do.

  It was all right, Laura Morgan assured her when Vicki had come in. No need to apologize for Missy’s misbehavior in church. Kids, who could figure them? After all, her own Dorothy wasn’t exactly “sugar and spice and everything nice.”

  Vicki was grateful that was all there was to it. She didn’t feel up to talking, not about anything that had happened yesterday, her personal Black Sunday. Sitting on the stool behind the counter, she flipped through the pages of Flower News, a trade magazine for florists. Every brightly colored photograph seemed drab, and she didn’t care to read about new styles in funeral arrangements.

  Last night, the rug had been yanked away to reveal the huge mound of dirt that had been swept under it—Warren’s long repressed anger and her usually repressed guilt. Warren’s drunken tirade hurt, of course, but he had not said anything she’d not expected to hear years ago when she had confessed her a
ffair with David Greenfield. It was, she thought, just about what she deserved. She’d kept Warren from their bed last night, but she had not slept alone. Her guilt had been with her.

  “It’s not the church thing bothering you, is it?” Laura Morgan called from the back of the shop, where she worked on a wicker basket centerpiece.

  “No, not really.”

  Laura came over and put a hand on Vicki’s shoulder. “Sometimes it helps to share problems.”

  “Thanks,” Vicki said. “I don’t think it’s that kind of problem.” Maybe her problem couldn’t be solved, she thought. Maybe the only solution, partial at that, would be to wear a scarlet “A” and proclaim her guilt to the public, as well as herself every time she looked in the mirror.

  “Whatever you say, but remember, I’m around.” Laura went back to her arranging.

  The bell above Blossom Time’s front door tinkled as Warren walked in. The late morning sunlight followed him, silhouetting him and blurring his outline. Of course Vicki recognized the familiar figure, but she had an incomprehensible feeling that sent chills shooting down her spine, as though Warren had cast off a disguise to reveal himself as a menacing phantom.

  “Vicki,” he said, “we have to talk.”

  He didn’t look the way she would have expected. His eyes were clear and not bloodshot; no trace of aches and pains was evident on his face.

  “Not here,” Vicki said. “Not now.” Maybe never, she thought.

  She’d been into the heaviest guilt trip she’d experienced in years, but, no matter what, she would not stay married to a drunk. She would not spend the rest of her life fearful of a drunk’s unpredictable rages. She would not allow Missy to grow up with a drunken father; better no father at all. She would not be a willing witness to the slow suicide of alcoholism, would not sit by the bed of a man dying of cirrhosis of the liver, a man who’d embalmed himself before his death.

  Warren said, “Please,” and reached for her hand.

  She pulled her hand back. “You ought to be at the university. I don’t want you here.”